Blackfeather
38 Demons
RAMIE? PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME, Ramie. I’m frightened. Where are you? Don’t leave me here alone!
I was dreaming. Had to be dreaming. Miranda was dead.
Please, please, take me with you, Ramie? I’m so frightened. Please.
She was begging me and sounded so much like my Miranda. I wanted to take her into my arms and hold her. I wanted desperately to believe I was back in her body. That she was alive and we could watch our baby grow up. We would change history!
“Miranda? How…? Was it a dream?”
Where are we? I remember my baby, and pain, and Raven calling. I tried to hold fast to you, but I lost your hand. I remember… Blessed Lord save me! I remember dying, Ramie. Where are we? Did you die with me? I was pulled and sucked in a torrent like being caught in a tornado. And then I felt you and I had hope. Are we in hell, Demon Ramie? Where are we, Ramie?
“I don’t know where we are. I was just… Oh! I think it feels too good to be hell.”
Are you playing with my privities?
“I was making love for the first time with my… with Kyle. I must have passed out. I’m dreaming about you. I miss you so much. We died, Miranda. You died. I came back to my body,” I thought to my hallucination.
I am not a dream. I can still feel Jason pulsing within me.
“No. It can only be Kyle.”
Perhaps we should open our eyes and find out.
I struggled against the weights that seemed to be holding my eyes closed and looked up into Kyle’s loving face.
“Jason!” Miranda shouted through my voice. “Jason, I thought I’d lost you.”
Kyle looked wide-eyed and his mouth made grimaces but no sound came out as he nodded up and down.
“Husband Jason,” Aubrey purred, lifting her lips to kiss Kyle. “My dear wife, Miranda,” she repeated kissing me. “Welcome to our world, my loves.”
“Katie?” Miranda said. I was still too stunned to get control of my voice. Aubrey shook her head. “No. I know you. Many times, I have relived Ramie loving you. You are Aubrey. And already, I love you.”
“Miranda,” Jason said, finally capturing Kyle’s voice. “I thought we were lost to each other forever.” I wasn’t expecting Miranda to swing at Kyle and slap him across the face so hard it stung my hand.
“Don’t you ever leave us again!” we cried together. “Raven called me. I had to watch… watch while you died! Don’t ever leave us again.”
“I knew the moment your spirit left your body, darling Miranda. I stayed my hand from defending myself. There was no reason left for me to live,” Jason said. “Wife Ramie, Friend Kyle. Aubrey. Are we truly here with you in a different time?”
“Unless we walk outside and hell has frozen over, welcome to the twenty-first century,” Aubrey smiled. She kissed us both again. “I thought this was going to be my first time making love to two lovers at once,” she sighed. “It seems that it will be a fivesome, instead!”
“Aubrey, how can you tell the difference?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Ramie. I just knew who was here as soon as Miranda spoke. Just like I knew you’d just taken over and asked me that question. I can see Miranda. I can see Jason. And in spite of the fact that I’ve never met them, I love them both,” Aubrey said. “But I’m getting a little impatient. You were supposed to start on me, next.”
We laughed. Jason and Miranda retreated just enough that Kyle and I could make love to Aubrey. We did the best we could. I licked her to an orgasm while Kyle feasted on her lips and nipples and then we traded places and I fingered her clit as Kyle plunged into our lover and filled her as he’d filled me. And we kissed. We kissed, and each time Miranda would switch with me or Jason with Kyle, Aubrey would moan.
“You are such a dreamy kisser, Miranda. Jason, stay in me just a moment longer. I want to feel you. Oh, Ramie, I love you. Kyle! Yes! You’re hard again!” Our girlfriend was delirious, but I think she knew it was Jason that came in her the second time, while Miranda kissed her.
Such a wonderful dream. I would remember having Jason and Miranda with us for as long as Kyle and I lived. The second time Kyle filled me, we drifted off to sleep again.
Ramie, it is not a dream.
“Who are you?” My hand rose of its own accord and my fingers pinched my left nipple.
Don’t you ignore me, you evil girl!
“Demon Miranda! Are you really here? Or do I only want you so desperately that I imagine you?”
I am not a demon!
“That sounds familiar. I have been possessed by a demon. I shall go to a priest and have her exorcised,” I thought sleepily at her. She was truly terrified.
Friend Ramie. Dear, sweet Friend Ramie. I am not a demon. Truly. Please, do not send me away.
“So now that it is my body being inhabited, I am Friend Ramie instead of Demon Ramie. Now how fair is that, Demon Miranda?” I tried to let my sense of humor seep through my thoughts. It took her a while to catch on.
Oh, Ramie. I am so sorry. Through all our time together, you were my friend. I’m sorry I fought you. I am sorry I called you… Oh!
“You’ll have to get used to my sense of humor if you are going to share my body and my time with me,” I laughed in my mind. I think I shook the bed a little. Aubrey reached up to touch my nipple. I sighed.
I will try not to be a burden.
“Miranda, I love you. You will never be a burden to me.”
I have remembered things. You saw our baby. You saw sweet Katie give birth.
“Yes. Well, not really saw. Sensed. Knew they were healthy. Oh, Miranda, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for our baby. For Katie. And for our short lives.”
But we are alive! I can feel. I can feel your hot tears on your cheeks and I can smell your body in bed. I can feel Kyle lying next to us. I can hear him breathing. And Aubrey next to you. Your memories tell me that we did not take care of Katie and she suffered.
“I don’t know for sure. Kyle and Katie-Lynn were raised in the whorehouse. I’m afraid Katie may have embraced her destiny and have spread her legs for many men. We went to Caitlin’s grave, but I don’t know where Katie lies. Perhaps nearby. Maybe that’s what Aubrey sensed in the cemetery.”
Our poor, dear Katie.
Telling our parents was going to be a challenge. And we wanted to set a wedding date. Now! The three of us—five of us?—walked up to the house on Thanksgiving morning and there was a non-stop commentary in my head on everything Miranda was seeing for the first time. She immediately pointed at the cars and four-wheelers and demanded to know what they were. I managed to convince her that they were trains that ran without tracks.
She’d balked at wearing jeans and I’d finally acquiesced to wearing a skirt. She’d been scandalized, though, when I’d refused to wear ‘bloomers.’
“My privities are a little sore,” I said. I spoke aloud so that Kyle and Aubrey could hear me talking to Miranda. “I am not going to shove cotton panties up my crotch. Besides, our husband or our wife might want access to take their pleasure from us,” I giggled, using Katie’s phrasing. Aubrey and I laughed and Miranda took the opportunity to commandeer my voice.
“Jason! This wicked girl refuses to let me put on underwear!”
“Oh, now, I find that hard to believe,” Jason drawled. He’d heard the entire conversation and either he was getting coached or he was adapting very quickly. “I will have to verify this information.” He firmly bent me over the back of the couch in our apartment living room and began pulling up my skirt. I yelped, but Aubrey sealed my mouth with hers as Jason felt around my butt and between my legs. Sore be damned. I want him to fuck me. I broke from Aubrey’s lips long enough for Miranda to whimper.
“Are you able to tell, husband? Or will you need to… probe deeper?” she gasped. Well, hell! If that wasn’t an invitation. I went back to Aubrey’s lips as Jason pushed his cock into me. Jason! Even I could tell the difference when it was Jason instead of Kyle. Oh, god! A new man was plundering my pussy. Miranda was soaking it up and I was coming!
I panted. I really needed to focus on not passing out every time I got fucked. Aubrey kissed me lightly and tweaked my nipples as Jason withdrew.
“Now, can we put on drawers? Or shall we let this drip down our legs when we go to meet your parents?” Miranda smirked.
I put on panties.
I stood at the kitchen counter, absently making pie crust and chatting with Moms. Aubrey was making sopapillas. I greased and lined two pie pans, trimmed the crust, filled them, and handed them to Mom Mar. She put them in the oven and turned me to face her. She looked me up and down. I was wearing a skirt that came just below my knees.
Scandalous!
“Just wait till we go swimming,” I thought to Miranda, flashing her an image of the bikini Aubrey bought for me last year. Miranda was shocked silent.
Mom Ash turned me around and looked at the other side. I’d chosen a nice western shirt that even had darts in the front.
“I just felt like dressing like a girl today,” I explained lamely. Moms looked at each other and nodded.
“Are you going to introduce us?” Mom Mar asked. Aubrey laughed so hard she choked, and after a little backslapping and a glass of water, we sat at the table with cups of coffee.
“Moms,” Aubrey said. “Please allow me to do the honors. May I introduce you to Laramie Wyoming Bell and her great-great-great-great-grandmother, Miranda Lewis Wardlaw.”
“Oh my god,” Ashley moaned. “Does your father know?”
“I believe Jason and Kyle are talking to him,” Miranda said. “I am so pleased to meet you face-to-face instead of just through Ramie’s memories.” Moms hugged us.
“You know, this just throws another whole batch of Pa’s theories out the window,” Mom Mar said. “Uh… is Ramie still there, too?”
“I’m here, Ma. But I have Miranda with me. Isn’t it wonderful?” I was gushing. “How did you know?”
“Your cooking skills tend toward burning beans on a campfire,” Mom Mar said. “But here you just threw together a flawless pie crust and didn’t even stop to measure anything. Let’s get those trimmings in the oven with a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar to have with our coffee.”
“And let’s make sure there’s an ambulance standing by to restart our men’s hearts after they eat that pie!” Ashley said. “Lard? I didn’t even know we had lard in the house.” She looked at Mom Mar, who blushed.
“I use it sometimes,” she whispered.
Just then we heard the guitar strumming in the office and a beautiful baritone voice singing ‘What a Friend.’
“Mercy! Who’s here?” asked Mom Mar. Mom Ash just shrugged. She could hear music; she just couldn’t sing it. Like Kyle! I looked at Aubrey and we rushed to the office with Moms behind us. Jason was sitting across from Pa’s big chair strumming the guitar and singing. I rushed to him and kissed him.
“That, more than anything, convinces me that we are really here,” Miranda said. “And makes me so pleased to meet my son,” she said, embracing Pa.
“I’m not really Kyle Wardlaw,” Pa said. “He was my host. I’m sorry about what happened to him… and to Caitlin. But I am so glad to meet my great-great-great grandparents.”
Well, it was complicated. Pa, of course, had a million questions for Miranda and Jason, but we also knew we couldn’t really talk about anything in front of the kids. We’d just have to go one day at a time. When they came in for dinner from being out with the horses, they were in jeans and work shirts, with bandanas around their heads to keep their hair out of their eyes.
“You kids could have showered before you came to the holiday table,” Mom Ash lectured them. They looked around and shrugged.
“It’s just us. Aubrey’s part of the family,” Phile said. Then his eyes came to rest upon Kyle, and I saw his expression change. It was unreadable. He whispered to Caitlin and she held Kyle’s eyes for a few minutes. Pa had us sit and bow our heads to consider the land and then we ate. Neither Kyle nor the kids said anything, so I guessed it was all okay.
We were married at Christmas. Justice Samuels came out to our house. Aubrey’s parents were there and her oldest sister. Gramma Bell and Gram and Grampa Alexander were there and commented over and over about how much it was like Cole and Ashley’s wedding. Moms fussed over Aubrey and me, playing with our hair, brushing imaginary lint off our dresses, and holding up different ribbons for our flowers.
Rick Miles had become a pretty good friend over the past couple years. He was the only one outside our family who knew the whole story. If that guy got tired of teaching history one day, maybe he’d become a shaman. He stood beside Kyle as best man.
I held Aubrey’s hand as Kyle slipped the simple gold band on it. She was so beautiful! Her dress was strapless with a brightly embroidered bodice that hugged her curves and fell in white ruffles all the way to the floor. I just wanted to eat her up. While the three of us held hands, Kyle slipped a second ring on my finger. Justice Samuels pretended not to notice. My dress was more conservative. I wore a long blue skirt with a plain white blouse and a knit shawl over my shoulders. There was no way to confuse me with the bride.
We had quite a celebration after we’d all looked into each other’s eyes and whispered, ‘I do.’
“I believe these words will be the ones you want remembered,” Pa said as he turned the Bible so we could read what he had written. Our three names and today’s date.
They have loved each other over time we cannot fathom. The circle is complete. That which God hath joined, let no man rend asunder.
All five of us rejoiced.
“This is so unbelievable. I have someone living in my head with me. How can that be?” Our lovers were asleep on our wedding night, and we all held each other tightly. Kyle was sandwiched between Aubrey and me. We had made love in every combination before we started to drift off. Now, though, as I drifted near sleep, I reached out to touch Miranda in my mind.
You are a fine one to ask such a question! It is a question I asked of myself for seven years.
“And now you are Demon Miranda. How will you handle that?”
Oh, Ramie. Sweet, loving, kind, Friend Ramie. I am no demon. I promise, I will not torment you.
“It must have been so difficult for you, love. I have missed you so much. Please stay with me. Please be my friend.”
Ramie, I know that I am dead. Blackfeather showed me a path but I wanted to stay with you. May I? Please, Ramie. I will be quiet. Please let me live on in you.
“Don’t ever go away from me, Miranda. I hope… I want you to stay with me forever. And love us. I know you love Aubrey.”
After what she did to our privities tonight, how could I not?
“I love you, Miranda. You made me strong. You made me a better woman.”
I love you, Ramie. I love you like my own soul. Rest, sweetheart. Rest and know that I am with you.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
